A 12-year-old child is agreed by law and by ethics not to be old enough to be able to consent to sex. (Exceptions are sometimes made, humanely, when two children of about the same age get together and everything is consensual even if neither of the kids are really old enough. This does not apply when an 18-year-old uses a 12-year-old for sex: that is statutory rape.)

Adam Hulin pleaded guilty to oral rape and assault by penetration in Guildford Crown Court two weeks ago. He claimed the 12-year-old girl had lied about her age and looked “17 or 18”. The judge commented “I certainly wouldn’t want to do anything which would prejudice his future career” and let him off with community service and a £60 fine.
The girl’s mother said that her daughter “first interacted with Hulin on Facebook and then went out with him on her own for a drive in his car a short time later.”

She said he gave her a soft drink mixed with vodka before committing the offences and knew she was 12-years-old.

She said: “He’s lying about not knowing how old she was. He asked her on Facebook what [school] year she was in. When she said year seven, he replied with ‘that’s cute’.

“He knew how old she was when he plied her with alcohol.

“She didn’t see him as a threat. There’s no way she looked 17 or 18 when she was 12.

The girl is clear she didn’t consent to sex, and it was noted by the prosecution that Adam Hulin asked her on his Facebook page what year at school she was in: when she said “year 7” (last year of primary school) he said “cute”. His defence was that he thought she was over 16. But even if he thought she was, getting her on her own, getting her drunk, and raping her mouth while she did not consent, was still rape.

Let’s also look at a list Chris Coltrane was circulating on Twitter today, from the Metro, billed as “27 Annoying Things Men Do During Sex”. As Coltrane notes: these aren’t “annoying” – they’re sexual assault. Redefining sexual assault as merely “annoying” allows Adam Hulin to act as if he’s the injured party because the girl he raped told her parents and he found himself in court, facing a sympathetic judge who thinks it would be a shame to ruin his career just because he likes to get little girls drunk and sexually assault them.

The second cultural problem we have in British society is predatory older men of every race identifying poor, young, emotionally broken women in care homes and sink estates as easy pickings for abuse. Whether it be Savile and his establishment friends inviting girls to the BBC dressing rooms, or the seven men in the Oxford case – five were from Pakistan and two from north Africa – pulling up at a care home to lavish a bit of attention, a cuddle, a bottle of booze, a ride in a fast car or a fun night out on a girl who has nothing. The patterns of deceit are the same and I don’t think religious beliefs, skin tones or cultural traditions were the impetus of either of these group’s end games. Instead, a very bog-standard notion that poor girls make the best pickings in British society. In fact, help yourself, treat the local kids’ home like a drive-thru McDonald’s. It will be ages before anyone stops you.

The girl whom Adam Hulin raped wasn’t in care: she had a supportive, angry mother willing to stand up for her. But the judge in Adam Hulin’s case still wasn’t interested in stopping the rapist: he thought it would be a shame to ruin a promising athletic career.

The interesting thing about how we treated young women in the 1970s and 80s is it’s really a ticking time bomb as these naive young fillies grow into angry broads. There must be men the length and breadth of Britain who observe scandals like Jimmy Savile’s and sleep uneasily remembering past conquests. Because it’s all got so hardline now, hasn’t it? All this paedophile business. It’s so very unforgiving. I mean, it’s not really rape if she was 15 and she came to your house without a struggle, is it? And so what if you told her you knew important people and maybe bought her a few presents. That doesn’t make you creepy, does it? She was 15 – or was it 14? – but she looked at least 20. See the problem with women now is they’re all so bloody educated and they’ve got so many rights, they can tie men up in knots about the past and the police will bloody listen. Well, actually the police are beginning to listen, when pushed, and take it rather seriously. Soon, pervert, soon.

Operation Yewtree is catching up to some of the men who raped young girls then. But Adam Hulin’s light penalty says this isn’t as much a thing of the past as we’d like to believe. Or maybe just that justice grinds slowly. Hulin only has to pay £60 and do “community service”: but he was still found guilty of separating a young girl from her friends and getting her drunk so that he could stick his dick in her mouth against her will. No matter how fast he runs, that’s never going to sound good in the news…